You can't get a hangover from Chocolate Liquor

Surprisingly, Calico’s Chocolate Liquor does not contain alcohol. Nor is it sweet. It’s simply the pure essence of the cocoa bean and it’s used to make our Dark Chocolate Fudge and other decadent dark varieties. It’s rich and complex, just like the history of chocolate.

Cocoa trees, with their golden bulbous fruit, have thrived in an area of Central America near the Gulf of Mexico since approximately 1000 BC. The Olmecs, the first major civilization in Mexico, are believed to have been the first to discover what delights these huge pods held and, over time, their contents became revered. Cacao was considered the gods’ food and the beans were used as currency. Many early drawings show the pods themselves being used in rituals and ceremonies.

Around 300 AD, after the Mayans had conquered the Olmecs and appropriated their cocoa trees, the innermost part of the bean was routinely being made into a paste or a liquid, which today we call chocolate liquor. This paste or liquid would eventually be blended with chili, allspice, and honey or vanilla to remove its bitterness. The drink was enjoyed by the wealthy, who considered it an aphrodisiac. Warriors drank it, too, because cacao was considered to be medicinal and was imbibed to strengthen fighters for battle.

However much energy the drink may have bestowed, chocolate liquor never possessed any alcohol. As chocolate aficionados know, it’s simply the heart of the cocoa bean—the essence of chocolate itself—but in liquid form. Today’s chocolate liquor is still produced by pulverizing the center of the bean (the nib) after it has been fermented, dried, roasted and separated away from its skin.

Facts About Chocolate:
A grinding process liquefies the rich cocoa butter, producing a velvety paste of pure chocolate that contains roughly equal parts of cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Once cooled, it’s molded into blocks of unsweetened baking chocolate, which can be eaten as is, or used to prepare thicker, more luxurious bars with 70% to 99% of pure cocoa. Dark chocolate, or semisweet, is produced by adding fat and sugar to cocoa; extra dark is synonymous with bittersweet, and has less sugar although the ratio of cocoa butter to solids varies between the two.